George Benson Tickets

George Benson
George Benson is an American musician, whose recording career began at the age of 21 as a jazz guitarist. He is however, better known to the public at large as a Pop/R&B singer, famous for such hits as "Give Me The Night", "Lady Love Me", "Turn Your Love Around", "In Your Eyes" and "This Masquerade", among others.

Early career
Benson was born and raised in the Hill District in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He now lives in Englewood, New Jersey's Bergen County. Benson started out playing straight-ahead instrumental jazz with organist Jack McDuff. Benson got his first experience playing with his several-year stint with McDuff's group. At the age of 21, Benson recorded his first album as leader on organ.

Benson's next recording was It's Uptown with the George Benson Quartet with Lonnie Smith on organ and Ronnie Cuber on baritone sax. This album showcases Benson's talent in constructing swinging bebop lines at blistering tempos.

Miles Davis employed Benson's talents in the mid 1960s; Benson played guitar on Paraphenalia, which appeared on the trumpeter's 1967 Columbia release. He went to Verve Records for a spell afterwards. Then, Creed Taylor signed him up for his CTI label, where he recorded numerous albums with jazz heavyweights gusting to limited financial sucess. Around this time, Benson also did his versions of The Beatles' 1969 album Abbey Road which he entitled, The Other Side Of Abbey Road and "White Rabbit"

1970s and 1980s
As he recorded for Warner Bros. Records by the mid to late 1970s, a whole new audience began to discover Benson for the first time. With the 1976 release Breezin', Benson began to put his vocal on some tracks on the Billboard pop, jazz and R&B charts.

He can play in just about any style -- from swing to bop to R&B to pop -- with supreme taste, a beautiful rounded tone, terrific speed, a marvelous sense of logic in building solos, and, always, an unquenchable urge to swing. On the strength of "This Masquerade? and the electrifying live take of the classic "On Broadway" recorded about a year later, he was able to crack through via the Pop and R&B Top Ten and as the 1970s wound down, songs such as the aforementioned "Give Me The Night", "Turn Your Love Around" and others became big hits for Benson as well. On Warner Bros., Benson accumulated three other platinum LP's and two gold albums.

He also recorded the original version of "Greatest Love of All" for the 1977 Muhammad Ali bio-pic, The Greatest.

Later and current career
By the mid 1980s, Benson cooled down a bit on the charts and spent the rest of the decade and the 1990s and up till today, continuing to tour and record music.

In 1985 Benson and guitarist Chet Atkins succeeded on the smooth jazz charts with their collaboration "Sunrise," one of two songs from the duo released on Atkins' disc "Stay Tuned." Producer Mike Poston states Benson and Atkins recorded an entire album's worth of music, the rest of the material has never been released due to disagreements between lawyers for their record companies.In 1992 Benson appeared on Jack McDuff's Colour Me Blue album.

George Benson will co-headline with Al Jarreau on an international tour to promote their 2006 album "Givin' It Up" where they will perform in S.Africa, Australia and New Zealand in summer 2007.

One of his songs, "Affirmation", was used during the "Gamblers and Gallantry" episode of Samurai Champloo during the brothel escape.George Benson is considered one of the greatest jazz guitarists of his time.